Chapter Two - "Beyond the Wonder

- story written by SaintAscension


When Love is LostObsolete Angel


----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Sacred Scroll : Life After Death

    Tenchi had been dead for a minute, but no sooner had she realized this all too unwelcoming truth, did she also realize that it would be the last simple truth she would ever know again.  It was not the fact that she was dead that bothered her, but more the idea that she could still be bothered in the first place (even in death) that truly troubled her.  When she had been alive, for so long she had dreamed of death as the last great adventure, and that with it came the knowledge of the Universe and Heavens.  Now however, she was starting to get the sneaking suspicion that death knew no answers, and that the afterlife was only filled with more unanswered and uniquely unfathomable questions.  
    How she had ended up in her present situation she hadn't the faintest idea.  As hard as she tried, she could not remember how or why she had died.  However most shocking was what she did remember.  It seemed that with her death, certain aspects of her mind had been unlocked, and not only could she remember her last life, but the many others she had lived before it.  Her memories came in jigsawed jumble, with past lives and their memories intertwining together, as if they were happening all at once, but then never happening at all.  She learned that she had lived so many lives, it was difficult to give any single life she had lived more importance than another.  However she lingered closer to the most recent, still acknowledging herself as Tenchi.
    Through death she learned she had lived on many different planets throughout the Universes, and had lived as many different species.  Some of these life forms looked human in appearance, standing upright and with similar facial features.  While others looked unlike anything she had ever imagined.  Some of these beings communicated through speech much like what is found by earth life forms, while others communicated by telepathy and other psychic ways.  However of all the lives she could remember, the lives she had lived on earth for some reason seemed to burn in her soul, as if she had left something behind.  Something still unanswered
    She knew not what to make of these new truths, but what was more endangering, was that she no longer had any reality on which to base on.  Though this would have seemed an ill-fate and reason to despair, she was not scared; she knew she had done this all before.

 

Untitled - Uknown Artist


----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Sacred Scroll : Lucius Mara

   Lucius Mara had always been a clever being.  He was regarded as one of the most devoted followers to the Celestial Plan, and before the rebellion, had been named "Celestial Order to the Universe's of Conscious Personality," dimensions:7-10.   Across the Universes, there resided an order and process just as all things in nature.  Thirteen Universes laid themselves in symmetrical harmony, all a cylindrical wheel of evolution and consciousness.  At its highest forms, the levels of true existence are felt with such unwavering pleasure, that it is said that stars, galaxies, and even entire universes of consciousness come crashing through a spirit, flowing like feathers through ones soul...

    ... the "Thirteen Personality Existences;" that is, the ability to consciously seek absolute oneness falls into a carefully planed out evolutionary system, seen in 13 stages of a soul's evolution to be aware of "true reason of existence."  All 13 Universes know different dimensions of reality.  Through these realities beings learn new conscious truths, along with new ways of understanding their existence.  It is off of these basic rules that knowledge is built, and soon a spirit will have lived millions of lives (even hundreds of millions of lives), reliving the same single truth and reality... 

    ... before one day, there is a final awakening of enlightened thought, and reality will slowly show a piece of itself.  It is here that a spirit will either move on to the next stage of existence, or (if a soul has still not reached its fate) stay in the very same realms. At times, there can be spirits so torn that they move down an evolutionary dimension of existence.  However for this to happen, one must take on such extreme proportions of spiritual decay, that only few have ever met this ill fate.  At the top of these planes of existence are "The Ethereal Order," and they bring peace to the Universes through the enabling of righteous souls to minister their smooth transcendence...

    ... Among the celestial beings that had been able to reach far in their soul's enlightenment, was Lucius, who was remembered for his charisma and charm, extreme intelligence, and ability to efficiently carry out his assignments.  After millenniums of proven and decorated service, Lucius was sent on mission by Kestal and Carl (Celestial Leaders of "The Ethereal Order") to govern the "Universe's of Conscious Personality."  These Universes consisted of mostly Physical Realms, which in a few millenniums where destined to meet their next evolutionary crossroad.  Lucius was to help guide the people of these universes towards cosmic harmony...

    ... no one was prepared for what was to come.  Before then, no one had ever even imagined the possibilities of what Lucius Mara's theories could implicate, and which would develop into what he would later call his "Spiritual Rebellion."       

 

Machinary of the Stars - Vitaly S. Alexius

 


----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Sacred Scroll : Conscious Boundaries

     The life of the recently diseased is far too familiar at times.  Tenchi learned this straight away.  She hadn't moved since her spirit had "moved on."  At first she had thought the darkness was her eternal fate, and that her inability to see was part of the afterlife experience.  However after a few minutes, she realized that she could still control her movements, (although to do so it felt almost dreamlike).  She wondered out of the dark cloud that filled her mind, and suddenly saw herself face to face with a most horrid of creatures.

    "Pay to Play."

     "What do you mean pay to play?" said Tenchi aghast.  The creature was a most magnificent sight indeed.  He looked almost human, except his eyes glowed red, as if a hundred rubies had caught aflame inside his deep brooding sockets.  To his back came attached two immense reptile-like wings, with oily scales flapping in rhythmic forewarning patterns.  He was a vision of benign evil so incredibly potent that for a few seconds she gazed on into his being, and knew she had known death.

    "Ah don't worry about him, he just likes to pick on the new deads," said a woman close by who Tenchi hadn't noticed in her daze.   She wore a red shirt with a white butchers apron over it, all of which appeared to be splattered in blood. She would have looked almost laughable, if not for the axe she was carrying.  Like the male creature, she too had eyes of ruby fire, though from her hair she radiated all the shades of brown that had ever existed throughout history, like a mood ring changing color. On top of this radiant vision of hair, she wore a pink ribbon riddled with holes. "You really should pay though, it does help,"  said the Demon.  She came closer to Tenchi and held out her hand, "my name is Diana, and that one over there is Fannon. Oh, and he really does like to pick off low leveled souls, so watch out," she finished with a wink.

    Still disoriented from the encounter, Tenchi (like any self preserving being), said the only rational thing she could say, "Please Don't Kill Me!"

    The Demon women squinted up at the male, and he down at her, until both slowly met eyes, and as if by some uncontrollable force, both burst out in the bliss of utter and raging laughter.  The laughter of a Demon is like the shrieking of a hundred baby seals, emitting huge frequencies that humans detect when they yawn.  "We're not going to kill you," said Diana wiping the tears from her eyes. "Hell, we don't even know you."

    "Oh," said Techi a little less uneasy. 

    "Well actually, there is one thing though," said Diana with a fake innocence few can achieve, "What do you think of the color pink?" 

    Tenche bravely considered her options, "I think I like it."

    Diana's eyes beamed, "you know what Fannon," she said raising her hands in praise, "this one here can stick with us."


Brain Storm - Vitaly S. Alexius


----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Sacred Scroll : Doubt

     It started gradually.  As most things do. Creeping into the corners of ones subconscious, and likening themselves as dreams, until you find yourself awake and acting on their behalf.  Lucius Mara lived in the highest plane of existence (the 13th Universe), which was the final evolutionary point towards universal oneness; a feat only the most transcended beings had achieved.  He had rid the souls necessity of feeding off energy, and no longer needed to reincarnate in order to gain knowledge.  Along with other enlightened beings of "The Ethereal Order," Lucius had reached a point in his spiritual growth that he could safely carry out divine orders to separate galaxies and universes.  He had already carried out several Celestial Orders in the past, guiding multiple galaxies into a new plane of existence.  These evolutionary peaks came systematically played out throughout the systems, and so far, he had successfully reached transcendence with every plane of existence he had ever been set charge with.   His metaphysical soul fluctuation was so exuberantly high, that his thoughts and spirit waved off huge energies everywhere his presence was felt.  He dedicated himself to the Celestial Plan
    Lucius carried out his duties far beyond the standards of most of his contemporaries, no one can fault him this.  However after hundreds and thousands of millenniums, it seems that there came a day when Lucius could no longer silent the subconscious grievings of his mind, and brought into question the necessity of such a Celestial Plan in the first place.  By all known accounts, it seems that no one influenced Lucius into thinking these thoughts, and that all subsequent thoughts of rebellion came completely from his own mind.  What is important to note here is that although such questions had always been asked at the lower dimensions (where one is still grasping on reality), never had such a highly ascended (and politically powerful) spirit given such a rebellious thought towards "Universal Truth."  It was assumed that spirits at such high levels would have taken the soul's necessity for "self" out, and felt inside its deepest cores the purity that was the Thirteen Universe System
    While administering to his duties on the "Universes of Conscious Personality," it is believed that Lucius began to have his first rebellious thoughts.  Lucius did more than just feel the energies of the Universes and their beings, but experienced every moment with them.  He had so much empathy for the horrid conditions of so many spirits that his soul reverberated with the despair of their realities.  It was the unspoken rule that "The Ethereal Order" where to accept the natural process of suffering, and know that the ineffability of the Celestial Plan repaid all kindred spirits with cosmic peace.  Yet, after so long of unquestioning service, a seed in his mind took root, and brought into doubt what he now believed to be an unjust and unfair system; one that all self-determining Celestial Universes should not have to subscribe to.  Waves of doubt over the system crushed his stone faith into sand, using his mind to radically assert new theories that questioned the Celestial Plan (and all its evolutionary necessities), to a new age of self reckoning.  He would bring his revelations to the courts of "The Ethereal Order," and see if they would heed his cry.

-----------------------------------------------------------------

and now...   Side Stories - "Different Days"

-----------------------------------------------------------------

- stories written by SaintAscension


Alien Tourist - madart84 


----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Side Story # 1 : Bad Day

    A tourist was on a cruise vacationing on a hot and "exotic" Caribbean island for a few days.  He'd been working hard for the last few months on what he had hoped would be his dream getaway.  He packed light for the trip, and had barely gotten to his beautiful hotel to drop off his luggage, when he was right back out the door again.  The sun was out fresh and thick, and he'd slipped on his new "Caribbean looking" tee-shirt he'd bought at the airport.  He walked the port streets for a few hours, visiting the shops and food offerings, but he found them all too touristy.  He decided to keep walking out and see what he could find.

    The port they had stopped at for the few days was at a place where the coast took on the shape of a small peninsula. The town was built there, and it was clearly commercial, with most shops feathered in tacky and strangely foreign products.  It wasn't that he didn't like the cheap magnets and key chains (one particular pen he'd appreciated had a woman undressing as you moved it from side to side), but it was just all the wishy-washy feelings he just wanted to shake.   He continued out,  walking the high coast, and saw out ahead an old fort from when the Spaniards had occupied.  Centuries old, it stilled reeked of tragic beauty along a sea stretching passed the horizon.  A huge field laid out in front of the fort, forcing one to enter the wide open spaces to reach its walls.  Him being a city man, he could not remember the last time he had been in such open land. 

    He paid the entrance fee to get into the castle; they had converted the place into an attraction. "Yuck," he thought to himself.  He took a few pictures anyways, but somehow the photos never captured anything real. 

    He walked back outside and noticed a neighborhood situated on what was perhaps some of the most inspiring sights of the ocean from the town.  The houses looked old and run down, but he heard music, and even thought he could scent the slightest whiff of sweet aromas from food in his nostrils. He decided to make his way down to the neighborhood, and after a few corners, had made his way to the entrance, where he saw a magnificent cemetery just off the sea shore.  The tourist decided that one particular headstone looked so glorious in this light, that he feverishly took out his camera for a picture of it.  Within minutes a group of men came walking over to him.  One held out a gun casually to his side, while another took the camera from the tourist's hand.  "Aqui no," says a man with neither camera or gun.

    When the tourist finally got back to his city job, he was happy to find out his camera was insured, however he sure wished he hadn't stained his pants.


 

Murder - NathanHenry



----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Side Story # 2 : Long Day

   Dorcas had always been a happy-go-lucky sort of girl, there was just no other way of putting it.  A sweet girl through and through, who always had a funny joke or story to tell.  The type of girl peopled liked to be around just for a chance to make her laugh.  Which was strange considering that her name was Dorcas, and which for at least all English speaking countries, means you'll probably be made fun of for the rest of your life.  However all the early jibs at her name only made her resilient to petty mockery, and she said her name strongly when needed, in order to make sure they at least said it right. 
    She wasn't very pretty in high school. Not really in college either.  In fact she was never the model-like beauty that so many drooled over.  Yet something in her personality had a strange sensual appeal hover over her, constantly grasping at immense eroticism.  She was still with her high school sweetheart (his name was Marcos), forever promising of love and togetherness.  They laughed as they tried to remember all the silly fights they had had, and thanked themselves that they'd never argued over anything too serious.  Her mother and father had needed getting used to the idea at first.  He was older, but only older by a few years, and overtime he had gained their trust.
    Soon it was going to be their third year anniversary, and this year had extra pressure on it since Marcos would be going off for military training the next week.  Their last night together was magical, or at least that's how she would always remember it.  He had dressed up in his nicest suit, and dined out with her at a wonderful restaurant in town.  They walked home together, promising that everything would be the same when he got back, and that he would find a way to talk with her every chance he got. They made love that night. Twice. 
    He left her place around 8 at night, telling her he had some things to take care of in the morning, and that he'd call later that night.  She kissed him goodbye and went back inside to shower.  By 8 in the morning, she knew he was dead.
    The newspaper had a few brief words describing the event.  "A man has been found dead with multiple stab wounds.  The victim had been in bed with a female, when the female's ex-boyfriend broke into the home, and brutally stabbed the victim as many as 15 times. The woman was severely beaten, and the suspect still remains at large."  It was reading this newspaper clip that Dorcas found out Marcos had been having an affair.
    His funeral had come so quickly that Dorcas hardly had time to picture a world without him in it.  Soft tears trickled down her cheeks.  She wasn't sure what hurt most, that he was dead, or that the killer had gotten away, and she was almost glad that he had escaped.  After all the years of love they had shared together, how could he betray her with another woman.  One thing was for certain, she was happy that he had finally killed her youthful naivety.  Love truly was disgusting.


Insane Child - 0mri 


----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Side Story # 3: Good Day

    As Gabriel took his first steps into the hospital room, he pictured his grandfather sitting up in his bed, smiling wide and annoyed that everyone had gotten so worked up over nothing. When his grandfather had been diagnosed with lung cancer, the doctor had only given him a few months to live, but 3 years later and you could see him still mowing the lawn with his tractor.   Gabriel had for many summers of his youth ridden that tractor, cutting the grass in mismatched patterns.  His grandfather would always give him 5 dollars, insisting one should be paid for their work.  Gabriel would always find a way to sneak the money back to him though.  The last years had been the worst.  During the chemotherapy Gabriel wished he could have been there to take care of him, but he lived long away.  His grandmother would be the one who would spend countless hours feeding him, bathing him, and cleaning up after him.  
    Now though as he walked into the dimly lit hospital room, he saw that his grandfather was not sitting up at all.  Instead he found his whimpering grandmother hovering over the frail body of what was left of his grandfather.
    "Gabriel my boy! Did you bring the chicken?" yelled his grandfather, and then beckoned in mock whisper, "your father is bringing the beer, and later we're going to cut that chickens head off for dinner."  The old man smiled at his good fortunes, and with a final pensive look announced, "I hope your father brings lots of beer."
    Later when the doctors were speaking privately with Gabriel, they told him that his grandfather had suffered a massive stroke, and that areas of his brain may have been permanently affected. Jokingly they asked, why does he always talk about beer and chickens?"  Gabriel could only shake his head.
    He went to the bathroom to wash his face, something about hearing his grandmother cry had left a tightness in his chest.  She had suffered so greatly already.  Before she had met his grandfather, she had been married to a man, and mothered three children with him.  However he was to die of a heart attack, and it was years later that she would eventually meet and fall in love with the man Gabriel learned to call grandfather.
    His grandfather would not die that day.  He lived on for two more years after that, in what everyone knew to be a state of rambling dementia.  Then one day he went into coma, and a week later he was dead.  In the months before that however, he would often go off into strange stories about places he'd never been, and people he'd never known.  His last conversation with Gabriel had been about how he had helped invent the light bulb with Thomas Edison.  For years, Gabriel wondered how his grandfather could believe he had ever really done that.


-----------------------------------------------------------------

... continuing Chapter Two - "Beyond the Wonder

-----------------------------------------------------------------

- stories written by SaintAscension


----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Sacred Scrolls :  Shadows

   It was cold.  Ascension peeled the frost from his fingers, looking at each solemnly, as if they represented an answer he did not like.  He looked over at Chopstick, who was either dead or dieing on the bunk at the end of the room.  The boat creaked as it swooned in the waves of the Arctic Ocean.  Clothing left to dry swayed this way and that, dripping drops of blood as each wave lifted and let go of the boat. 
    A grumble in his stomach reminded him of his hunger, which pierced sharp jabs of pain in his gut as he breathed.  Each breath he struggled.  The famine might have been doable only a few weeks before, however with the death of three of the ship-men, and the disappearance of several others, the boat had been left with only few able hands to cross the cold black ocean.
    It had been just under three months back that Winterborn had found "The Book of Shadows" on him.  Though now, as a scream curdled from the upper decks, Ascension wondered if the wizard Grimmjow had placed a curse on them.
    Again Ascension heard the scream, and braced himself to move his weakening body to the stairs.  He reached them slowly, squeezing the knife in his hand as he made his way up.  At the top of the stairs the door slammed open and shut against the wind, each crash blowing rain into his face.  The water chilled as it touched his lips, and he licked the ice from them as they formed. 
    He held the door open and waited, staring into the deep shadows of the empty ship deck.  The wind howled into the sky, a siren of the storm looming above.  Not a star twinkled into the mystic night, but instead a glistening wall of rain, which stabbed into his skin. 
    He squinted his eyes once again into the shadows of the ship.  One of the sails had not been properly lowered, and it flapped as its ropes struggeled to hold on.  The long empty barrels tide to the sides of the ship hummed separately as once more the winds roared their might.
    It was then that between several humming barrels Ascension noticed a shadow growing against the darkness.  It lingered at first, unmoved by the swaying of the ship, and then slowly slide closer towards Ascension.  As it came creeping along the deck, it became as if a cloud of smoke, cushioning itself into the blackness around.  The shadow cloud hissed as it came just a touch away from him, and Ascension felt its unearthly breath on his forehead.  He slammed the door shut before the blackness buried him inside, and held the knob tight as the door violently shook.
    What curse had they placed upon this world, what darkness was this?  The door became unbearable for Ascension to hold shut, and he let go of the knife, holding tight onto the knob now with both hands.  The knife tumbled down the wooden steps to the bottom, which now too grew shadows of its own.  The door croaked as if it would break in half, cracks splintering out.  The shadow at the bottom of the stairs began to crawl upwards, immersing each stair in its darkness. 
    The darkness was now upon him, and Ascension closed his eyes, feeling his body wither in his oncoming doom.  He took a final breath and opened his eyes to meet his fate, and in this motion the darkness turned to light, giving way to the shining sun which sprinkled its warmth onto his shivering body.
    The Shadow had passed, and he had survived another night, but at what cost?  Another member laid dead on the bloody ship deck, this one named Miko.  Her empty gaze looked on upon Ascension, and he wondered who would die the next night.

 

Crossing the Titan - Alex Vitaly


 

Angels also Cry - Nikitia1979 


----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Sacred Scrolls : The Book of Shadow

    What one does not know will not hurt them.  What one has never felt before, knows not of how it feels.  And if one has ever felt the kiss of death before, you know you live long after to regret your every remembrance of this.  The world of missed opportunities and mis-matched desires.  So organized the human mind for catastrophe.  How willingly one blinds themselves to not see how inconsequential they have allowed themselves to become.  No situation that does not already set its rigid fingers on ones own being, if there is any at that.  The way civilization shut its naked eye on what it has created humanity to do, what it has created them to become.  A world of people without conscience.  A place no single light can live without the hollowed spirit of another nearly blowing ones own flame out.

    The Book of Shadows was a reminder to all the souls so softly kept on living on in sleeping sorrow.  A reminder that even in your sleep you are awake alone in your nightmares.  The book was a curse to all the generations that had come before it, to all the lives laid bloodied in its name.  A curse to all those who followed with a smile, though not if the smile be carved to their faces.
  A book that to open it meant being sucked into the despair of its own existence, as if the book itself wanted no part of its own creation.  It consumed the very willing of the soul, and left it arms-reach to the fear that lurked inside.

    It was fear that made the wizard Grimmjow write the book.  Though not the fear that man feels of death, or loneliness, nor hate or anguish, of betrayal or sickness, nor pain nor love.  No, his came of a more sinister nature, in which it was a fear that he could not spread the message to more souls.  For that is what Grimmjow believed his book to be, a message that soon no eyes would not have seen its fate.

    A book of judgment not based on the merits of a soul, but the length of which the soul would go to survive.  To turn one against the other, and unleash their basic instint of murder, of death.   No fear is alike, and there is not one without the other.  Upon the pages of the book came the never ending battle of the two; fear and reality.  The soul would go down into the crevices of its own being, and in itself revealing its greatest weaknesses of all.  The magical powers of Grimmjow held tight onto the soul, allowing it to destroy itself, and claim victory to the unbound truth of the message inside.


   So they had read the book, so they too would know of its curse.  To die here would mean fates worse than death.  To die here meant you never came back.



 

Angel Wings - Bill Davenport 


----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Sacred Scroll : Evolution of the Cosmos

"Universe of The Lost Souls" - dimensions:1*

"Universe's of Materiel" - (i.e. planets,plants,minerals) dimensions:2-3*

"Universe's of Physical Reality" - (i.e. sol system: animals,) dimensions:4-6*

"Universe's of Conscious Personality" - (i.e. sol system: humans) dimensions:7-10*

"Universe's of Metaphysical Reality" - (i.e. sol system: angel&demons) dimensions:11-12*

"Universe of Enlightenment" - (cosmos system: celestial gods,enlightened beings,"the ethereal order") dimension:13*

"Universal Consciousness" - Order of Truth - (at one with all consciousness and reality)


* Lucius (aka "The Fallen One") Battle for Control during the First Great War
* Kestal & Carl as leaders of "The Ethereal Order"
* Suffered great unrest throughout many Galaxies

 

 
Make a Free Website with Yola.